BNSF's Marias Pass: A Railroad Superhighway

for railroads in the western United States the rocky mountain ranges provide a formidable engineering challenge for each and every one form thanks to the colossal energies unleashed by tectonic movement the mountains rise out of the Pacific Ocean and tower above the prairies that dominate the center of the continent for the northernmost mainline the Great Northern the answer to the front ranges was found at Mariah's an extraordinarily low summit of the Continental Divide with a general eastern slope and workable Western descent built without any major tunnels and lined with terrific scenery mariah's Pass has become one of the nation's majestic railroads where millions of tons of freight threads through the wilderness to connect the country together this is BNSF's Mariah's pass a mountainous railroad superhighway presented by the Thornapple river rail series while Shelby Montana is not the eastern terminus of the BNSF High Line subdivision it serves as a key milestone along the northern transcon serving as the Eastern Gateway to Mariah's pass with a modest rail yard and connection to both the Great Falls and sweetgrass subdivisions the town of 3,300 people still hosts an amtrak station the site of our first catch on this adventure with a mile of mixed Freight on the drawbar this.g e.c '44 - 9w leads a westbound through town on a seasonable June afternoon [Music] [Music] thirty minutes later a hotshot domestic intermodal train takes the approach medium signal entering the single track territory while quite a bit of the railroad has been double tracked over the years many miles remain with only a single set of rails for the railroad pressing several dozen trains daily it's quite a challenge to keep the railroad out of gridlock as how does that intermodal was BNSF's dispatchers still try their best to give em tracts Empire Builder top priority still today's edition of tray number seven is running three hours off schedule thanks to heat restrictions across the Great Plains while BNSF does not use Shelby as a regular crew change point the Empire Builder receives a fresh crew for the run over the mountains for their trains BNSF uses the town of Havre 100 miles further to the east as a regular crew change and refueling destination west of Shelby the rolling windswept Prairie continues at Ethridge the railroads flagship train is back up to track speed rushing past the classic grain elevator here [Music] the city of cutbank is another classic Montana prairie town named after this scourge cut by the aptly named Cut Bank Creek it is spanned by this impressive 1140 foot steel truss bridge constructed in 1900 by the Great Northern with the shadows getting along in the late afternoon the 9:00 hour late eastward edition of the Empire Builder flies over the grazing cattle and into their stations stop at Cut Bank [Music] with today's Amtrak trains clear the area this westbound manifest was next to be cleared through town [Music] the next morning the view from the eastern bank of the gorge was stunning as the Rising Sun illuminated the rocky mountain peaks over 50 miles away having successfully conquered the mountain ranges from the Pacific Ocean this eastbound intermodal has many miles of much flatter terrain ahead likely destined for Chicagoland with these several hundred containers full of imported goods from Asia [Music] while the towering mountain peaks might be inching higher on the horizon as we move west at Sundance the last few miles of the agrarian Great Plains refused to terminate while those hotshot intermodal trains polished these rails ferrying imported Asian consumer goods inland trains such as this 108 car 5 locomotive grain drag move American agriculture to the Pacific Ocean for export 10,000 tons at a time [Music] [Music] we caught back up with a grain train and found them waiting for eastbound traffic 1,300 miles away in Fort Worth Texas the dispatcher has planned a 3-way meet with an intermodal hotshot due to overtake another with this railroad working at near capacity the dispatchers often flex their creative muscles to keep trains moving along as best they can with the first eastbound through the control point the commands came over the wire from Fort Worth to line the second eastbound over to the other main track around the waiting grain train [Music] [Applause] we now skip ahead to Blackfoot and named after the local indigenous tribes and where the doubletrack comes to an end rolling in off the single Maine we find this Auto RAC intermodal combination headed east [Music] [Music] browning marks just 18 miles from the nearest mountaintop and by now the hills have become much more of an engineering challenge throughout this area much of the original mainline has been replaced with shorter alignments crossing over massive fills and through deep cuts [Applause] [Music] at East Glacier Park the grasslands are finally giving way to pine trees and steep ravines thanks to its strategic location on the eastern mountain slopes this area quickly became the eastern headquarters to what would become Glacier National Park [Music] [Music] originally opened in 1913 to serve the Great Northern Rail road's Glacier Park Lodge the station here continues to be one of the most popular empire builder stops during the summer months the platform quickly crowded prior to the arrival of the eastbound Edition with over a hundred passengers waiting aboard for the return trip home [Music] [Music] [Music] with all of their passengers aboard and luggage stowed the engineer was given clearance to proceed from his conductor leaving the mountain west behind the great plans will dominate for the next thousand miles towards Minneapolis and eventually Chicagoland [Music] [Music] rolling in behind the Builder was this intermodal train with more domestic trailers and containers than you can shake a stick at they lumber through the village at a leisurely pace waiting for Amtrak to get further out ahead [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the last sighting before summit is at bison where we find this westbound grinding out their last few miles to the summit milepost 1150 marks the east end of the double track at Summit just a mile to the east of the true crest of the hill still grinding hard but about to begin their long coast to whitefish this intermodal meets this manifest which had just completed their own ascent on the west slope moments before [Music] charted by great northerns chief engineer John Frank Stephens with the help of a local Indian guide in 1889 Brian's pass offers one of the best routes over the Continental Divide in the western United States with a topping out elevation of only 5,000 215 feet the pass is low by Continental Divide standards and occurs in this wide valley below the peak of Summit Mountain making it relatively simple to engineer the railroad the western slope between Essex and summit is characterized by towering mountain slopes rising high above the railroad and Bear Creek below and the winter's snow builds on these slopes and culminates with over a dozen active Avalanche zones fighting the 1.8 percent effective gradient we find this eastbound intermodal with all 44 cylinders beating hard to keep the train moving on a snow shed number eight halfway between Essex and the summit at Java Little Bear Creek joins the much larger Middle Fork of the Flathead River which the road bridges to be on the easier side of the canyon meanwhile US highway 2 maintains course on the opposite slope allowing fleas magnificent views of goat lick Trussell vista short way is further down the line [Music] [Music] this bridge over Sheep Creek became known as goat lick for the mountain goats which often are seen clinging to the rocks in search of a salty snack compared with the grade further up the mountain these lower slopes present a lesser rate of ascent allowing the same train we saw at snow shed number eight to maintain a greater velocity earlier on in their climb [Music] [Music] the village of Essex was created by the Great Northern as a maintenance of way and helper base for the upper reaches of the paths trans heading east have over a thousand feet of elevation again in short order and the winter typically requires a significant amount of snow control rolling in from the upper reaches of the hill the engineer of this loaded grain train has is ten thousand tons of Wheaties under control with both the dynamic and air brake systems [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] just around the curve is what's left of the art here which still retains its original function as a maintenance of way they's this footbridge were on connects the famed Isaac wall in and the rest of Essex to a number of hiking trails and cottages many of which are fashioned out of old railroad cabooses after another loaded grain train has come to a stop the eastbound run of the Empire Builder rolls in the town beneath the obscured peak of Rampage mountain [Music] [Music] [Music] later we found this loaded cargo train waiting for clearance westward as this eastbound intermodal takes their clear signal on the other main track [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] between Nayak and Belton the mountain slopes close in again to form another narrow Gorge cut by the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in response the road built a series of tour short tunnels to avoid the rivers jagged bends making the road easier to operate and maintain total number 3.8 is the longest on the pass at just over 2,500 feet in length and it's easily visible from here on the shoulder of us two [Music] [Music] [Music] belly is the great northerns original name for what has become West glacier village the area is notable as home to Glacier National Park headquarters and the western terminus of the legendary going-to-the-sun road cruising in off the mountain on a deciding this westbound intermodal is clearing up the main line for the Empire Builder hot on his heels [Music] just like a nice glacier words of tourists utilized the train to reach this otherwise remote area gliding into a stop to the classic sound of super liner brakes squeal this edition of number seven has over a hundred tourists to exchange before their departure [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] just past the west end of the Belton sighting we found this eastbound empty crude oil train taking the siding for a meet with the westbound grain train [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] at core am this grain train of the empty variety was taking advantage of the broad curves and light gradient making track speed at the west end of the siding [Music] at the old yard in Columbia Falls we found this eastbound auto act led by eight locomotives only half of which were on line [Music] teakettle mountain towers up ahead and they'll soon be skirting its southern slopes in route to Koran [Music] with so many trains trying to use the limited track resources BNSF was struggling to keep everything moving in the summer of 2018 one common solution was to hold out lower priority trains while those cut for more valuable cloth got their crews and signals much more easily at Half Moon we found several westbound bulk unit trains lined up waiting for their turn into whitefish while an eastbound train of empty crude oil tanks scooted out of town [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the city of whitefish marks the end of our tour over Mariah's pass located 2,000 feet lower than the summit of Mayas and home to over 6,000 people whitefish has become the Western anchor city on the High Line subdivision with a sizable yard and all train stopping to change crews another tourist hotspot for travelers on the Empire Builder whitefish is the busiest amtrak stop in Montana with over 50,000 passengers per year passing along the historic Great Northern platform here [Music] later we found this westbound intermodal preparing to depart with the new crew boarding their leading GE es 44 c4 locomotive with the green light displayed ahead it was it long before their journey was underway departing was several hundred ocean shipping containers bound for the ports of the Pacific Northwest [Music] thanks for watching this super highway edition of the Thornapple River rail series don't forget to leave a like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video more railroading documentaries are out regularly as we enjoy scenes from across the industry you

Channel: Thornapple River Rail Series

Views: 923,062

Rating: 4.830121 out of 5

Keywords: train, trains, bnsf, up, Marias, pass, Montana, Shelby, Cut, Bank, Fort, Piegan, Blackfoot, Browning, Glacier, Park, Summit, Essex, Snowshed, Paola, Belton, Coram, ES44AC, ES44C4, C44-9W, Northern, Transcon, Great, Burlington, GN, NP, BN, Empire, Builder, Amtrak, P42, Superliner, intermodal, passenger, grain

Id: FlgwOVntknA

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 09 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Ned_Diego]

BNSF is the best example for Power of Dividends. Berkshire Hathaway bought BNSF in 2010 for $44B. For the past 11 years (including 2010) they have received about $41.8 B in dividends. (They paid this dividends while maintaining about $2B cash with them) With this year's dividend they will cover the purchase cost.

Railways have 20%+ net margin. Higher than some of the tech companies.